The present invention relates to methods of monitoring and tracking people and objects.
Monitoring and tracking persons and objects has become a significant concern. When children travel alone, either to school or to other activities, they are often in danger of being abducted or otherwise accosted. With more and more parents working, children tend to spend more time traveling and moving about without adequate supervision. Parents require a way to monitor the safety of their children, and track their whereabouts.
Many elderly adults live alone and away from their children. These elderly adults often suffer from incapacitating health emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes, dizziness, or other such ailments, and may need assistance. On other occasions, these persons may become disoriented or lost, and may not be able to find their way home.
Also, due to the general workings of the penal system, and also due to overcrowding of prisons, many dangerous persons are being released from prisons and allowed to travel in society. There is a need to be able to track these persons, so that they may travel about society, while still being monitored and tracked to provide safety for those around such persons.
Many of the devices and methods currently available for monitoring and tracking persons may have deficiencies. Methods presently used for monitoring and tracking include the use of audio and visual baby monitors for monitoring babies, ID tags for children, video cameras, access badges and use of security guards around schools.
With respect to the elderly, devices exist whereby a person may manually trigger an alarm condition by pressing a button. These devices have limitations, however, when the monitored person is incapacitated, or if the monitored person travels outside a local designated area.
With regard to monitoring potentially unsafe persons who have been released from prison, methods of protecting others from such persons include signs around schools stating that an area is a drug-free school zone, fliers and notices being distributed to residents when a past offender moves into a neighborhood and other similar systems.
Some of the shortcomings of the systems are related to the fact that these methods are limited in the amount of protection they provide, because: a) they are prone to false alarms and failures; b) adults or other parties are not alerted to a problem automatically, or in a real time basis; c) they are restricted in a geographic area of protection; and d) it is often difficult to inform a potential victim of impending danger.
A person or object may be monitored or tracked by way of the use of two or more object area network elements. The object area network elements may be placed on or near the person or object. The object area network elements are devices that may communicate and share information with each other to form an object area network. The object area network is a local area network whereby the object area network elements located on the monitored person may inter-communicate. Information may be shared between the object area network elements via inter-element communication over the object area network. Further, the shared information from the local object area network located on the person may also be communicated to a remotely located base station via a wireless communication network such as a cellular communications network.
Biometric and other data related to the object or person may be 1) obtained by sensors on the object area network elements; 2) shared on the object area network; and 3) communicated by wireless communications to a base station. The object area network elements may also be capable of a) obtaining position data related to the object or person; b) sharing the information over the object area network; and c) communicating the position data to a base station. Additionally, the object area network elements may have an alerting unit whereby a person may be alerted to a dangerous situation by communications from a base station.
Advantageously using two or more object area network elements, a monitoring and tracking system is formed that is less prone to false alarms and failures, because multiple networked object area network elements are used. Multiple object area network elements provide system redundancy and the ability to share information between the multiple object area network elements, thus reducing the occurrence of false alarms triggered from an erroneous reading from a single unit. Additionally, adults or other parties may be alerted to a problem automatically, or on a real-time basis. Further, the use of a positioning system on the object area network elements allows for monitoring that is unrestricted as to the geographic area of protection. The area of protection is unrestricted because, as a monitored person""s position is tracked via a positioning system, communications between the object area network and a base station may be accomplished via a wireless communication means, such as a cellular communication network, as the monitored person moves from place to place. Still further, if a monitored person is in danger, he or she may be informed of an impending danger via an alerting unit located on one or more of the object area network elements.
Working together as an object area network, object area network elements may monitor a person by the use of sensors, track the person by the use of a global positioning system (GPS) receiver system, share information by way of inter-element communication units, and/or communicate information to a base station via a wireless communication unit. By inter-communicating via wireless or other means and working as an object area network, the object area network elements may also track a person while each of the object area network elements may monitor and also track operability of, and share information with, the other object area network elements via the inter-element communication units and the object area network. In this manner, monitoring and tracking performance are improved, while false alarms and inaccurate data are minimized.
Thus, a person carrying/wearing the object area network can be tracked by either or both positional and biometric information. Deviation from known geographic or biometric parameters can trigger alarms or initiate emergency communications.